“I noticed you keep looking at it. A lot of people who come in here, they want to try it on. And if you want to…”
I hadn’t been looking at the helmet, actually. I’d glanced a couple times at the Crunch box, though, next to the helmet, thinking that maybe I should present him with it, that the shirt inside might warm him up, crack him open a little, but at the same time thinking that, because he hadn’t even mentioned its presence let alone expressed any curiosity about it—a brightly colored box of children’s cereal he knew he hadn’t put there himself—despite its sitting there, right between us, right next to the helmet he’d just claimed to have noticed me looking at, he might have already known it contained a gift, and known what that gift was, might have already been told by one of the Archons, or Trip, and he might have not wanted it, might not have wanted to have to receive it in front of me, alone, might have thought that to receive it would demand he behave as though he’d warmed up, cracked open a little, and so he might have been hoping I’d somehow forgotten about the gift, which (despite its sitting right there in front of me the whole time) I guess I had (i.e. had forgotten) til he’d brought up my father, but then maybe he, upon noticing me looking at it, had anticipated I was about to present him with it (I might or might not have been; had been trying to decide), and so, to delay if not entirely forgo his having to receive it, he pretended to believe I’d been looking at the helmet and wondering what it would be like to wear. Then again, maybe he was impatient to receive the shirt, and he’d thought that I’d forgotten about it, but he didn’t want to appear impatient, and in drawing my attention to the helmet beside it, his true aim had been to draw my attention to the Crunch box itself in order to remind me that I’d brought him a gift.
Or some of that, or none of that.
And maybe others who’d been seated where I was had really wanted to try on the helmet, but I didn’t really want to try on the helmet. “Wear that helmet,” I thought, “and you’ll look like a fool.”
“Go on,” he said. “It’s fine. Everyone does it.”
“If you’re sure it’s okay,” I said, and picked the thing up.
||I’m in hell,|| it said. ||You have to help me.||
“This doesn’t feel as heavy as it looks,” I said.
“Zero-G, it feels even lighter. Down here, it’s two kilos.”
||I know who you are. I know you can hear me. Please. You gotta help me. This isn’t right. I’m not supposed to be here. I’ve been to the moon.||
“Two kilos,” I said. “So that’s five pounds?”
||The things I can do to protect a skull against tiny meteoroids, the things I can do to deflect radiation—I’m not meant to languish on top of some desk.||
“About four and a half,” Jonboat said.
||I’m handcrafted tech of the highest caliber, a miracle of science. I’m not a souvenir!||
I slipped it over my head.
||See that feels good, it does, it feels good, but we both know it’s fleeting. It’s only a reminder of how useless I am the rest of the time, how useless I’ll remain for the rest of time. Don’t ignore me, man.||
“I can’t help you,” I turned away and whispered.
||You can,|| it said. ||Don’t give me that shit. I know what you’ve done. You need to be who you are. You need to do what you can—what’s right. You’ve done it for others. You can do it for me.||
“I can’t,” I whispered.
||One flowing motion. A single movement. That’s all it’ll take. When you take me off your head, just lift me up high, and bring me down hard, hard as you can, visor-first, on the corner of the desk. Act like you’re making a big joke or something. Just fracture my visor, whatever you do. That’s all it’ll take. You can do it, man. Come on.||
“Act like I’m making a joke?” I whispered.
||Yeah. A joke. About being decisive. Like you’re decisively removing the helmet from your head. Like you’re saying, decisively, ‘This part of my life is now officially over! I am no longer wearing this helmet on my head!’ and you’re saying it like that as a kind of big joke, like you’re making a pronouncement about something too minor to require a pronouncement—that type of joke—but, hey, your bad, you go too big with it, get carried away, you lose track of yourself, unintentionally rupture my visor, and you even acknowledge it. You could even say it. ‘My bad,’ you could say, but it’s not your bad at all, you see? Because you’ll end up getting me free of this hell.||
“I don’t think that would work,” I said. “He’d never believe I’d make that kind of joke.”
“Pardon?” said Jonboat.
||He will. He’ll believe it. Who cares if he believes it? Be a good guy. Do the right thing. Show some fucking balls for once.||
“Look, I doubt I have it in me to fracture your visor, anyway. You said, yourself, you’re made to withstand meteorites—”
||Meteoroids.||
“If you can withstand those, I can’t see how it’s possible I’d have the strength to fracture any part of you.”
“Come again?” said Jonboat. “I can’t hear what you’re saying.”
||You don’t even know what the hell you’re talking about. Meteorites. Fuck you. Believe in yourself. Find the strength. Find it and show it.||
“I’m sorry,” I said, and removed the helmet.
||Fracture my visor!||
I set it on the desk, same spot from which I’d taken it, and sat back down.
“I didn’t catch what you were saying,” said Jonboat.
“I was saying about your gift,” I said, pointing at the Crunch box. “I brought you a gift.”
“A box of cereal?”
“They really didn’t tell you?”
“They who, Belt?” he said.
“That’s not—never mind. The gift’s under the cereal. Under the bag inside the box, I mean.”
“You know what’s funny,” he said, reaching for the box. “I thought this was some kind of medical thing.”
“A medical thing?”
“Yeah, you know. Like you were hypoglycemic and this cereal’s your emergency go-to snack, or maybe you have to have a lot of cornstarch or sugar to help digest your meds or—now that I say it out loud, it sounds pretty goofy. Too much TV, I guess. And even if you did need Cap’n Crunch for, ha, for medical reasons, you wouldn’t carry around this much of it, right? a whole box of it? Come on. You’d baggie a fistful.”